Cody Reed: Cody Reed has thrown 1,775 pitches that have been tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2016 and 2018, including pitches thrown in the MLB Regular Season and Spring Training. In 2018, he has relied primarily on his Slider (87mph), Fourseam Fastball (93mph) and Sinker(92mph), also mixing in a Change (87mph).

His slider is thrown extremely hard. His fourseam fastball has heavy sinking action, is a real worm killer that generates an extreme number of groundballs compared to other pitchers' fourseamers, has slightly above average velo and has slightly less natural movement than typical. His sinker has heavy sinking action and has slightly above average velo. His change is thrown extremely hard, dives down out of the zone and is an extreme flyball pitch compared to other pitchers' changeups.

Sean's Note: Reed has only pitched 25.1 innings in 2018 much of it out of the pen. He generates a ton of grounders 56% of balls in play. He has thrown 2.2 scoreless innings against the Cubs this season.

Final Thoughts: The Cubs lineup is not what you would call stacked today. Anthony Rizzo and Ben Zobrist get the day off for rest against the lefty Reed. It would help if struggling hitters could step up, much like Ian Happ did last night. Jon Lester is making the start after leaving with back tightness in his last outing. Hopefully he is feeling good, because every game is huge now.

The lineup actually has pretty decent #'s against Reed. I'm pretty sure Rizzo, Zo, or Murphy will get an opportunity to PH or play later in the game if need be. The Cubs should be able to win tonight if Lester is on point. Although the Red's lineup has some pretty good #'s against him also.

It's all good, except Strop. That hurts. I'm wondering who may step up. Cishek and Chavez make sense, but at this point we really need lightning in a bottle. Maples? We're going to lose because of this, or a legend is about to be created.

I was thinking that same thing after that 20+ 1st inning. It seems like that, bunting, taking a pitch after a wild pitcher just walked a batter or two is just old school thinking and out w the do do bird.

Cards lose again. At this rate, we may never see our favorite poster again. Need the Cards to start winning so they don't fold vs the Brewers. Other then the Cards, the Brewers schedule is rather easy.....on paper.

Lets get some runs here......... Lester show this Offense how to get a 2 out KNOCK

What a huge win every win is big at this point but you'd hate to lose a game against a starter like Cody Reed who has been rotten as a starter. Kudos to Maddon I had a feeling he was gonna find an off day for a number of our core every day stars that have played basically this entire long stretch so it's good to see maddons long term rest gamble pay off with the team still getting the win without a number of regulars in the lineup I think even though our regulars clearly need rest it would've been a tough pill to swallow losing to a struggling Cody reed in a game we were heavy favorites. I wanted our every day stars to get a day of rest in an easier series like this one before traveling to Arizona for a pivotal series against the dbacks and then we get our long awaited off day.

The biggest thing to come out of this game besides the win is the brilliant 109 pitch gem by Jon Lester. For those of us that wondered if his back injury would hurt his performance this was great to see and it's good to see him feeling strong enough to give us a deep outing. The cards division chances are finished my condolences to Greg Simmons but the least those guys can do is to actually win a game against this dodger team they're still the team no one wants to play come playoff time

Before the season started Joe thought we might have the best pitching staff in MLB. Well, it took getting Chatwood and Darvish out of the rotation but we’ve got the 5th best in MLB and I think the best starters the last month. A great signing of Hamels and the rest finding themselves.

I think both teams had trouble seeing the ball due to the sun. All in all, KB has been great since his return. Minus the power, he's been getting on base quite often. I'm starting to think Contreras needs glasses. Especially for locating pitches thrown to him.